Olga Vobrubová

* 1942

  • "I immediately phoned my parents because I heard on the radio that the houses next to the radio building were on fire. I lived not five minutes from the radio building, and there were two houses on fire. It made me sick. My parents said it was something crazy and that they even hid under the window because there were tanks in Riegrovy sady and they were shooting at the houses in Vinohrady. My parents did have their windows on the other side, but nobody knew that, because the people who had windows facing Riegrovy sady, they actually had holes in their wardrobes, because Riegrovy sady is on a hill. It was like this. Then I ran out to buy something because I was terrified that suddenly there would be nothing to eat. It was a big shock for me. But I think the biggest shock was for my father because he still had Russia as our liberator."

  • "All of us residents – which was about twenty people, maybe fifteen, they were small one-room flats – so he snuck in, and because he was worn out from the fences, his coat torn, his face dirty, everybody who was in the basement thought it was a German or somebody like that. They finally recognized him. And he said: 'You all have to come with me to the hotel because there are Germans there and it is still kind of quiet, you just have to come with me.' My mother, I was three years old then, put a white cap on me so I would be seen, and my father took me on his shoulders. And the residents went. Except for my grandmother who lived in the next house, but one lady was pregnant and my father’s mother said she was going to stay here with that lady and not come with us. So, they stayed there, and my daddy and those people would sneak through the garden again, through the Nuselské údolí. Dad said, 'You must not walk in a crowd, you must walk one by one.' Those people were afraid, so that is how they got to the hotel in the morning. Dad put them up there and we lived to see the ninth of May."

  • "After the assassination of Heydrich in Prague, they were looking for a lady's bicycle." – "Why were they looking for it?" – "Such a bicycle was on display, which had been involved in the assassination at the curve in Kobylisy. They needed to find out who the bicycle belonged to. My mother had the same bicycle, even with the same spokes. There were Czech policemen, and German policemen as well, going around different parts of Prague, including Pankrác and Baarova Street. And then they came to our house and asked the owner, who lived on the ground floor, who own here a lady's bike. He named those, those, those, and then the Störzers as well, my parents. 'And do they have the bicycles?', 'Yes, they have them in the cellar.', 'Well, okay, thank you and goodbye.' If they had found out that the lady's bicycle was not there, then of course nobody would talk to anybody, they would take my mother, my father, including me, and we would end up somewhere at the shooting range in Kobylisy."

  • „I really admire heroism of people who were able to do this. On the other hand the number of victims was so high, that it is questionable to me whether it was the right thing. But I don′t dare to judge it, as it was very different time, very stressful. For my children it is more like some movie then the true story, they are not able to understand it.“

  • „There were checks-up throughout Prague searching for anybody missing his bike. The bike used by the assassinators was later on shown in the shop window in the Wenceslas Square and there was a high reward promised to everybody who would help to find the owner of the bike. So the patrol came to our house too, one Czech and one German, and they asked the landlord who from the house owned a ladie′s bike. He replied, that Störzers had one and that it was in the cellar. Luckily, as it was in the evening and they had been already tired, they didn′t want to see it and left.“

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Mladá Boleslav, 22.02.2012

    (audio)
    duration: 23:40
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Mladá Boleslav, 26.04.2022

    (audio)
    duration: 02:06:19
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

I am lucky to live

Olga Vobrubová, picture taken shortly after the end of World War II
Olga Vobrubová, picture taken shortly after the end of World War II
photo: archiv pamětnice, Veronika Kroupová

Olga Vobrubová was born in November 1942 in Prague. She tells two stories, which were from her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Störzers, in the time of Second World War. One is from the time after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the second one took place during the Prague Uprising in May 1945. She also ownes memoirs of her uncle, Mr. Karel Störzer, who was imprisoned by Nazis for his membership in scout organization and spent several years in concentration camps.